October 15, 2015

Cornell Faculty Donations Flood Left, Filings Show

Of the nearly $600,000 Cornell’s faculty donated to political candidates or parties in the past four years, over 96 percent has gone to fund Democratic campaigns, while only 15 of the 323 donors gave to conservative causes.

The Sun’s analysis of Federal Election Committee data reveals that from 2011 to 2014, Cornell’s faculty donated $573,659 to Democrats, $16,360 to Republicans and $2,950 to Independents. Each of Cornell’s 13 schools — both graduate and undergraduate — slanted heavily to the left. In the College of Arts and Sciences, 99 percent of the $183,644 donated went to liberal campaigns. The law school demonstrated the strongest conservative showing, with nearly 26 percent of its approximately $20,000 worth of donations going to Republicans.

Leaderboard 1

(Data compiled from Federal Election Committee)

Almost one-third of donations made over the past four years went to 2012 presidential campaigns. More than 94 percent of the $200,000 Cornellians contributed to the presidential race went to the Obama Victory Fund, while the Romney Victory Fund received under four percent of these funds.

To compile this data, The Sun filtered public Federal Election Committee filings, collecting the donation information from individuals who listed Cornell University as their employer. The Sun then confirmed the current appointment of each donor as a Cornell faculty member, instructor or researcher. Administrators and other personnel were excluded from all calculations.

Surprised?

Leaderboard 2

Although students and professors alike said they consider Cornell’s faculty generally Democratic, nearly all remarked that they had not expected to see donation numbers so dramatically skewed.

“Nationally, economists, chemists, business school professors and engineers are significantly more conservative than professors in social sciences and humanities,” said Prof. Mildred Elizabeth Sanders, government. “Finding 97 percent of Cornell professors giving to Democrats, that’s surprising.”

Danielle Eiger ’18 said she would have thought that the Democrat-Republican breakdown would be closer to 60 percent and 40 percent, but said she was always sure that the “majority of professors are liberal.”

Prof. William Jacobson, law, one of the 15 Republican donors, said that he found the statistics “completely predictable.”

“Academia in general leans heavily liberal, and that likely is compounded at Cornell because Ithaca itself is a progressive bubble, surrounded by reality, as the saying goes,” he said.

Inside the Bubble

Though Cornell’s administration declined to comment for this article, John Carberry, senior director of media relations, said only that political tendency is “not a condition [the University] weighs when hiring or working with faculty.”

However, several professors offered their opinions as to why such a high percentage of Cornell’s faculty seems to lean left.

Prof. Richard Bensel, government, said a “historical trend” explains a declining number of conservatives in Cornell’s faculty.

“In the late 19th and early 20th century, there were far more conservative professors than liberals in elite universities — although it was still not nearly as slanted as it is today,” he said. “This switched around the New Deal.”

He also conceded that in today’s climate, “a lot of the time conservative professors don’t want to work here.” Prof. Emeritus Isaac Kramnick, government, explained that there were one or two conservative professors in the government department in the 1960s and 1970s, but both had already left.

(Data compiled from Federal Election Committee)

“Conservative students who come through a place like Cornell very easily move into research or advising positions in Congress, journalism positions and political positions,” Kramnick said. “Career patterns are such that you are less likely to have conservatives applying for academic jobs.”

Other professors asserted that Republicans often have ideas that are “anti-science” or “anti-intellectual,” which can make them an unpopular presence at elite universities.

“It is not surprising that faculty at Cornell find the anti-scientific rhetoric of many in the Republican Party to be troublesome,” Prof. Kenneth McClane, English, said. “Many of us here are scientists — we believe in global warming, since we believe what the research tells us.”

Bensel echoed this claim, saying that recent Republican debates have illustrated the deviation of “mainstream conservatives” from views that are widely accepted by intellectuals at reputable universities.

“I think many mainstream Republicans have views that are anti-intellectual and anti-science,” he said. “There are candidates who are creationists, don’t believe in climate change and claim that Obama’s a Muslim. Ted Cruz, for example, should not teach here.”

Student Stories

Kramnick said that when he served as Cornell’s vice provost for undergraduate education from 2001 to 2005, he was “concerned that there were not enough conservative voices in the faculty.” Some students maintain that their professors’ politics never enter the classroom. Others recount times when they felt stifled by an atmosphere intolerant of differing viewpoints.

William Bristow ’16, president of the Cornell Democrats, said his professors have consistently delivered material with an even hand.

“I have never found myself in a classroom environment where a professor did not allow for an open discussion between different political views,” he said.

Emily Agnew ’18 said she does not think the political leanings of professors should be problematic, because professors are expected to always be unbiased when teaching subjective subjects.

“Their political affiliations are unrelated [to the material], and professors should be allowing the students to discuss and explore without imparting their own opinions,” she said.

However, some students recounted incidents in which they said their professors were far from objective, saying that personal politics entered both the classroom and coursework.

David Navadeh ’19 said he was in a nutrition class in which his professor regularly featured announcements from various clubs before class began. According to Navadeh, one day the professor advertised a Planned Parenthood rally, which was an event independent of any club, and spent substantially more time than usual encouraging his students to attend.

“He was very clear what his personal leanings were and he made it very clear that we should stand with Planned Parenthood as well,” he said. “I certainly respect their right to protest and I respect the other view. The irony just kind of strikes me, though, if a conservative professor were to say that you should go to a defund Planned Parenthood rally and was saying what a good job folks like Ted Cruz are doing in making sure that that happens — if someone were to put forth the idea that abortion is indeed murder — I can just imagine the outcry.”

“We were largely focused on financial crises and after we finished the 2008 crisis the next slide said, ‘and that is why deregulation and free market economics do not work,’” he said. “So I asked him, ‘Isn’t it too early to say that this is the case?’ And he says, ‘No, it’s not too early it’s too late.’”

Brandon Thompson ’16 said he has seen “thousands of examples” of professors holding debates and only giving conservative students a fraction of the speaking time given to their liberal counterparts.

Cornell Republicans Chairman Mark LaPointe ’16 said he deliberately took microeconomics with a professor who he knew was fiscally conservative and stressed that, while they may be rare, the few conservative professors at Cornell are highly respected and “[their presence] is definitely good for the campus.”

Is Something Missing?

According to Thompson, there is not one moderate or conservative professor among the 42 faculty members in Cornell’s government department. While some students feel that a valuable viewpoint is missing, other students and professors say they do not feel the University needs to actively seek out conservative faculty members.

Bensel said that while he would support adding a conservative to the government department, he does not believe Cornell is obligated to supply students with all points of view.

“Our job is not to mold the minds of young students — they’ll go out into the world and do that for themselves,” he said. “Cornell does not have to be a banquet that offers every viewpoint.”

Prof. Andrew Little, government, said that while it would be “nice to have more balance,” he would not advocate compromising the quality of Cornell’s professors, which he suggests would be the effect of seeking out Republican faculty.

“Placing more emphasis on diversity of political beliefs when hiring [would] almost certainly require sacrificing on general quality or other dimensions of diversity,” he said.

Jacobson, on the other hand, said he views the failure to expose students to the conservative viewpoint as one of Cornell’s most striking weaknesses.

“If we value professors not just for their research and publications, but also for the role they serve in mentoring students, then the lack of political diversity among the faculty is a University failure,” he said.

Many acknowledged that it is difficult to determine whether Cornell’s political imbalance is due to a lack of conservative professors applying to work at the University or the administration’s refusal to hire them.

“I think it would take a lot of bravery to work here as an openly conservative professor,” Bensel said.

Damaging Diversity

While Cornell pursues diversity in its student body and in certain aspects of its faculty, many students and professors who saw these statistics said they were concerned about Cornell’s professed diversity of thought.

“Cornell faculty pride themselves on eliminating discrimination with respect to ethnicity and gender,” Bensel said. “But I think one of the last prejudices they still have is against conservatives.”

Thompson also said he saw the absence of the conservative viewpoint among faculty members as in conflict with Cornell’s proclaimed mission of diversity.

“I think that’s actually kind of an embarrassment for Cornell with their stress on diversity and inclusion, and yet whenever someone’s position doesn’t go exactly into the range that they’d like it to, they purposefully will not let those opinions be heard,” he said.

(Data compiled from Federal Election Committee)

Jacobson said he believes this lack of diversity is actually most damaging to liberal students, who leave college without having to defend their views and enter a world where “Republicans control both houses of Congress and most state legislatures and governorships.”

“Such homogeneity in thought process at the professorial level is not conducive to intellectual rigor. That harms liberal students more than anyone, because they have a comfort zone of political acceptance which does not exist in a real world,” he said. “Over the years, I have observed that openly conservative students have to be better prepared for argument than their liberal counterparts and that process prepares them for life better than being intellectually coddled.”

Thompson agreed, saying that he, as a conservative student in the College of Arts and Sciences, has a chance almost every day to hone and defend his own beliefs, while many liberal students never experience a “trial by fire” test of their own values.

“I actually think that students on campus on the right-end of the political spectrum are stronger and more able to confront challenges to their viewpoints after they leave here, so I think Cornell is actually failing students in that way as well, they’re not providing students with an alternative point of view,” he said.

Jacobson called on the administration to recognize the value and necessity of diversity of thought in Cornell’s faculty.

“Diversity at Cornell focuses on gender, race and ethnicity as a proxy for intellectual diversity. That is inadequate as an objective matter because it has not resulted in a diversity of political thought,” Jacobson said. “If Cornell truly believes that diversity of thought fosters the educational experience, then it should include political diversity in its mandated diversity goals.”

Connor Juckniess ’18 contributed data analysis to this article.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Cornell Republicans Chairman Mark LaPointe ’16.

Related

Amjad Atallah, editor in chief of Al Jazeera America, presented “Journalism Under Fire,” a lecture focusing on the importance of journalists and freedom of the press. The lecture was this year’s installment of The Daniel W. Kops Freedom of the Press series, which has been offered for over a decade.

Vana Koutsomitis ’09 appeared in BBC’s reality television show The Apprentice Wednesday. Koutsomitis, currently the CEO of financial services network The City Street and a hotel school graduate, praised her alma mater in an interview with The Sun, saying that it provided her a global perspective and valuable learning experiences.

117 thoughts on “Cornell Faculty Donations Flood Left, Filings Show”

I am curious as to why you left out administration and other personnel? in the last local election for house of representatives member,the local perennial Ithaca politician received almost a million dollars from under a dozen people at Cornell if I recall correctly. this information was supplied from a column in the Ithaca times.

The Sun has trumpeted a sample of less than a fifth of the faculty (323), these being campaign donors, not faculty as a whole, who gave overwhelmingly to the victorious candidate (and incumbent) in the 2012 presidential election, in a state where that candidate, Barack Obama, won by a thumping majority. Big surprise.

This is, furthermore, a state in which:

– the governor (incumbent) is a Democrat;

– both U.S. senators (incumbents) are Democrats,

– in fact, ALL statewide offices are held by Democrats.

Uh, we’re not in Texas.

Even if we were, the results in Austin, home of the University of Texas and a large high-tech industry, would also be strongly Democratic.

But there were special reasons for Cornell Democrats to donate energetically in 2012.

The local congressional Democratic challenger, Nate Shinagawa, who confounded Washington officials by coming very close to winning, was a Cornell favorite:

– a Collegetown resident (and Tompkins County Legislator representing Collegetown; he has recently moved to an other district in Ithaca);

– a Cornell alumnus, both undergrad and grad;

– a candidate many of whose campaign workers were from Cornell;

– a candidate whose press officer, Nate Trefeissen, was the LGBTQ At Large representative on the Student Assembly and an elected leader in his Cornell fraternity.

Nate Shinagawa was also one of the first if not the first Asian American to have a good chance of being elected to the U.S. Congress from a non-Asian-American majority district;

Finally, he was the target of an overtly racist campaign by a rightwing radio talk show out of Rochester.

Lots of special reasons there to mobilize to donate to his campaign.

Oh, but there’s another reason. Nate’s campaign was being ignored by national Democratic Party officials who ignorantly regarded the congressional district as Republican flyover country.

In fact, this district as often sent Democrats to Washington. But Washington “professionals” decided that giving money to his campaign would be a waste of resources, and perhaps they figured an Asian American had no chance here, no matter what.

Had they given money, he probably would have won. Their failure to do so, however, was an added incentive to Cornellians to donate.

This article is a case of colossally bad reporting, the kind of thing we’d expect to read in the Cornell Review, not the Sun.

Obviously Democrats are dominant at Cornell and in Ithaca. Nothing to be ashamed of there. When North Carolina voted overwhelmingly antigay in a statewide referendum, polling booths around the Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill campuses went overwhelmingly (94%) the other way. Both schools can be proud of that.

But the use of campaign donations is a dubious statistic at best, especially in a state like New York where Republican statewide candidates have virtually zero chance of winning.

From the rest of your posts, you’re obviously a master of the strawman argument. Good job there again.

Perhaps you would not be so ill informed if your environs didn’t suppress actual Conservatives from expressing their opinions. Otherwise known as common sense.

But I appreciate your efforts here, trying to stack the deck, as your cohorts do at Cornell and in academia overall! Guess you can’t keep a Liberal away from a paycheck of good ol’ tax payer dollars. Pity we all have to clean up after you. Good luck!

Well, Jon, thanks for your thoughts. What might be more useful would be an attempt to answer any of the points made.

The Sun has published a piece aimed at creating the impression that 97% of professors are Democrats (which is how a lot of people, for example Jose, below, interpreted the results).

In reality, the Sun chose CAMPAIGN DONATIONS in election years when Democrats running for statewide office were certain to win.

Can anybody remember the name of Andrew Cuomo’s opponent? Or Kirsten Gillibrand’s? Cuomo won in a landslide. Gillebrand won with the biggest landslide in modern memory, 72.2%, carrying all but two mostly rural counties.

Needless to say, very few people see much point in donating to candidates who are running as sacrificial lambs, or as lawyers who are merely seeking to build their client base by getting to know wealthy Republicans.

The Sun’s work here is a classic case of lying with statistics. As a Cornellian and as someone who once worked on the Sun and has always (until now) respected it, I am ashamed.

Come on, Ron, this is, frankly, another case of lying with statistics, just like the Sun article.

I don’t like Cuomo either, but I have to admit that he won in a landslide, 54% against 40.6% for his Republican opponent Rob Astorino. (The rest went mostly for the Green Party candidate,including my vote.)

So what if Cuomo lost mainly rural upstate counties where very few people live? He carried Erie County (Buffalo), Onondaga (Syracuse), Albany (Albany), Broome (Binghamton), Tompkins (Ithaca), and lost Monroe (Rochester) in a near-tie? No offense to the other counties, but that’s practically everybody in upstate New York (he also won three Adirondack counties with extremely small populations).

Astorino didn’t even carry Westchester County, although he was County Executive there. In fact, Astorino lost Westchester in a landslide.

And Jon, funny you should mention “spin” and “strawman arguments.” This whole Sun article is nothing but spin and strawman arguments.

As a Cornell Law School grad mentioned to me a few minutes ago, what is amazing, considering the special circumstances of Nate Shinagawa’s remarkable 2012 congressional campaign, noted above, and the purported political preferences of the Cornell faculty, is that not even a fifth of Cornell’s faculty contributed to Nate’s campaign.

That’s at most – since less than a fifth contributed to all the election campaigns combined in the years 2011-2014, according to the Sun.

Most of your reply was opinion based from your very liberal bias. You are stating as fact that this gentleman was being attacked by a rightwing radio station
In your world, if anyone states a different belief or thought, they are ignorant, racist or homophobic. It is too bad that you don’t realize that hearing and believing actual facts put before you, are actually signs of intellugence. Hanging onto lib talking points and histeria is immature and damaging to a country you are so fortunate to live in and speak your mind whenever you want. Your desire to support stifling others is strange to say the least. You only want freedom of speech and diversity when it pars you on the back and encourages clone like belief and behavior. Pretty crazy but extremely sad.

Debbie, I didn’t say Nate Shinagawa was “attacked by a rightwing radio station.” No problem with that. I said that he was the target of an overtly racist campaign by the radio station.

In a July 2012 “Bill Nojay Show,” on WSYL Radio, Nojay, the station owner, tells listeners that they should be “impressed” that he can pronounce the name “Shinagawa.” Nojay’s guest, local Republican activist Paul Gullo, then predicts that Nate Shinagawa will lose “just because of his name.”

A moment later, “Sukiyaki,” a popular Japanese song from the 1960s, plays in the background while Nojay explains why he thinks Nate cannot defeat his Republican opponent. A lengthy piece of the song “Sukiyaki” takes over, half a minute or more playing the show segment out.

The article seems to be focusing on faculty because they are directly impacting the education of students, and potentially imposing their individual bias on impressionable students…something which is not the case with regard to “administration and other personnel”.

The reason that administration and other personnel were left out is that this article was not researched and written entirely by Cornell students. The following excerpt from the May 1. 2015 Harvard Crimson article “Harvard Faculty donate to Democrats by Wide Margins” uses remarkably similar language:

“The Crimson analyzed the federal donations of contributors who reported Harvard University as their employer and were listed in Harvard directories and websites as professors, lecturers, fellows, associates, researchers, and scientists, as well as visiting fellows and professors. The data set does not include people who only work as administrators.”

There have been a plethora of similar articles in other college papers over the last few years. These articles may have originated at one school, and spread with social media; but it is more likely that they were planted by conservative think tanks. Regardless, Cornell deserves independent journalism. It is difficult to trust the Sun when sources are not appropriately sited and articles are not original. Perhaps an article investigating and addressing the source of these highly political articles would be appropriate?

Not sure where they are coming from, but they certainly are coming from somewhere. Have you read about the Koch donations to colleges? There are a number of conservative think tanks, including ones that pay student interns for the summer. I wonder what the authors of all those articles have in common.

Call me a “dreamer,” but one day I hope that Cornell University will embrace a greater diversity of thought. It is the single best way to ensure that the students have a deep-reasoned and thoughtful belief in their own thought. Knowing one’s self, leads to a good life.

Randy Wayne, we’re all in favor of greater diversity (in fact, the university faculty and student body have become considerably more diverse demographically since the mid-1960s when they weren’t diverse at all — there were almost no women on the faculty at that time, for example, nor Blacks nor Latinos, as students or faculty, and “Jewish” fraternity members and “White” fraternity members sat on opposite ends of the Ivy Room, as reported in this newspaper at the time).

But I presume you’re talking about politics. And there’s a problem there. A political party that has a majority of its members claiming not to believe in evolution will not get much traction on a university campus, where courses from astronomy to zoology assume an understanding of the history of the world and the history of the universe that has developed considerably since the time the book of Genesis was written.

What other reasons are there to vote Republican? Well, there are pocketbook reasons, of course. But college town zip codes are not stockbroker belt and McMansion zip codes. Ann Arbor, Michigan is not Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and Ithaca, New York is not Scarsdale, New York. Faculty members simply don’t make the kind of money that would cause them to mobilize around lowering or abolishing the capital gains tax.

What about students? Because of their numbers, they naturally tend to set the political and social tone in college towns. There are some very wealthy students at Cornell, of course. But most students are staggering under a growing debt load that they will never be able to pay off. They demand relief, something Republicans are not willing to give them (and we’re not too sure about Democrats, who draw their campaign money from the same Wall Street cesspool).

Beyond that, students tend to the left politically, and not because of a plot by the admissions office. Simply put, students, like other young people, are far more tolerant than their elders. They have close friends, and date, and often marry across the historic color lines in this country, something their grandparents would have found unthinkable. They have close gay friends (or may be publicly gay themselves), and even in fraternities gays are now being elected to leadership positions, something even their parents would have found unthinkable.

Dear Mark,
It must be possible to have mixed faculty in departments. I know that it is possible to have mixed marriages between democrats and republicans, as my wife an I have! Respect and trust have to trump party.
As for politics, I am glad you mentioned, “From Astronomy to Zoology,” which is the subtitle to my book, Plant Cell Biology, whose royalities go directly to the Profiles in Courage Award given by the Kennedy Library.

What other reason is there to vote Republican, you say? Well I’m a student from a very low income background (my household income is 10K a year– and yes, it is possible to live off of that, though most limousine liberals here wouldn’t have any clue) and I’m sick and tired of being lied to and deceived by Democrats about how “evil” the “rich Republicans” are (when in reality the Dems are the ones keeping us dependent on the government and discouraging and preventing us from becoming self-made people because somehow amassing your own personal wealth is “evil”–except in their cases, then it’s fine for them to get richer). A friend of mine from back home (poor and a minority) used to be a liberal back when we were in high school until he entered the workforce right afterwards, and now he’s a staunch Republican. You don’t have to be socially conservative (although I personally am strongly so on all possible issues, regardless of whether someone irrelevant thinks that that’s “not intellectual” enough to deserve being at Cornell, and yet I’m still here) to have fiscal common sense. I was fairly conservative even back in high school, but taking more and more economics classes throughout college and into my senior year now has reinforced my conservatism. Even libertarians are having a hard time here and have to resort to joining the conservatives to openly discuss their opinions without the childish screams of “buuhhh you bigot, you hate poor people” coming from the other side.

As a side note regarding the ILR labor econ professor making the ridiculous conclusion that “free market economics and deregulation don’t work,” I’m not surprised one bit as an ILRie. A lot of the ILR labor econ classes are a joke, I was lucky enough to take it with a professor who stuck to teaching things through mathematical proofs and empirical evidence. Econ classes in ILR don’t hold a candle to A&S econ classes, the former often operate on anti-capitalist rhetoric and the latter are much more mathematically and logically rigorous.

A lot of chirping in this comments section and from certain professors about Republicans not believing in evolution, very little about the anti-science views of Democrats who oppose GMOs and nuclear power. Anti-science knows no party.

You have it backwards there. Science has suffered at the hands of those benefitting from the sale of GMO seeds (or as they would have it, renting the traits).

The characterization of all opposition to the way GMOs are being implemented as anti-science is not a valid point of view. Much opposition to giving 20 year patents to private companies for transgenic traits stems from concern about the dominance of the seed industry by few companies and control though licensing of smaller companies that would have been competitors under traditional IP laws.

Also, science has suffered from severe restrictions laid down by private corporations holding recently (1996) enhanced patents on who can conduct research with GMO materials, which materials they can use in studies and which data they can publish. Truly independent research on the efficacy and safety of GMOs is virtually impossible today. When attempted, those publishing results felt by the patent holders to threaten sales and profits are the targets of withering legal action, ad hominem attacks and flat out misrepresentations to their work.

I suspect that you are so deep in your liberal bubble that you don’t know any actual Republicans. Where did you get the idea that the majority of Republicans don’t believe in Evolution? You should get out more.

“Our objective with regard to faculty is to strive always for excellence – excellence that is multi-faceted and manifested in a myriad of ways,” Garrett said. “It includes an obligation to foster diversity of viewpoints, of experience, of identity, race and gender and of methodology.”

However, when we find that 97% of professors are Democrats, suddenly even the Government department “does not believe Cornell is obligated to supply students with all points of view” and has “not a single conservative or moderate”. And yet political tendency is “not a condition the University weighs when hiring or working with faculty.”

When we have too few Native Americans or Blacks in the Math department, it’s an outrage and we start initiatives to hire more faculty because somehow skin color affects teaching math, but when the Government department is completely lopsided, suddenly no one cares about diversity of thought.

Thanks, Jose. It depends on what you mean by diversity.
I was class of 1970 and was on campus during the nationwide student strike of May 1970 after Nixon invaded Cambodia and students were killed at Kent State and Jackson State. There were widespread demands by students for curriculum reform.

In the Government Department, three very rightwing professors from the Leo Strauss group at the University of Chicago, who had held influential positions for years (two of them left angrily after the 1969 events), as well as quite a few others who were at best centrists in the US political universe. The same was true with the History department. Economics was arguably even more so.

Those were not good times. The three “conservative” Government professors were not willing to discuss and debate anything with their students; on the contrary, they punished students who tried, as did their TAs. (Nothing much changed in that regard.)

Just one example: In the summer of 1970, I overheard the following conversation in the Teagle Hall locker room between a member of the faculty I didn’t know and a and quite conservative, indeed reactionary, but quite prominent, member of the History Department, whom I will not name because I am quoting him here and he is not around to defend himself.

[UNKNOWN FACULTY MEMBER:] “You know, the University has a place up the lake and I was up there this last weekend. I think we should invite some students up there for a few days, and ask them, ‘What classes do you want to keep, what classes do you want to get rid of, what classes do you want changed, and how, and WHY.’”

[RIGHTWING HISTORY PROFESSOR:] “No, that would be like King John calling all the boys together at Runnymede and asking, ‘Well, let’s see here, Warwick, how many fiefs have you got?’ You’d have everything to lose, and nothing to gain.”

I didn’t know what was more flabbergasting, that he was completely unwilling to discuss the curriculum with students, or that he saw a resemblance between the Cornell faculty and King John.

Your personal anecdote from 40+ years ago applies how? I’m not sure it’s what you intended but to me it demonstrates the problem with one political viewpoint dominating the discussion. I read it as an argument that Cornell needs to expand beyond just the Democratic party.

On a separate note, why don’t you name the “three very rightwing professors”? I’d like to know who they are (or were). You don’t need to tell us which one was associated with the odd story above. I’m always interested in finding out what qualifies as “very rightwing” to Democrats.

The only surprise is the lopsidedness of the result. Sort of like an election in North Korea. The student can spot where the professor is coming from and then just be sure to think for yourself. Except on the exam be sure to spout the party line. We did that in the past and no doubt it will work today too.

Not a surprise that those who stress the empty rhetoric about conservatives’ anti-science bias are those who have absolutely no work in a hard science. To be fair, I’m sure Little & McCalene contribute greatly to groundbreaking research like Instagrams’s effect on the cisgender,white supremacists’ agenda to oppress Laotian minorities in Minnesota (such scholars!).

Ultimately, this is just another indicator that Cornell professors have absolutely no interest in providing the best educational experience available to students, but rather are just your stock self-interested academic who could not make it finding real employment.

Aside from a majority of Republicans refusing to believe in evolution, the problem isn’t that Cornell faculty deserted the Republican Party, it’s that the Republican Party deserted them.

I know quite a few who would still be Republicans, Northeast 1960s variety, but progressive sitting Republican U.S. senators like Charlie Goodell and Jacob Javits, both from New York, were read out of the party when party leaders mobilized to defeat them.

Many more, like Mark Hatfield (R-OR), Chuck Percy (R-IL), and currently, Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), would not find a welcome in that party today.

Javits frequently reminded voters downstate that, although he was a Republican, he was not a “routine reactionary Republican.” In the end, he was defeated by those who were.

Powerful figures in the GOP wanted to take the party to the right, and use the “southern strategy” to pull in old Dixiecrat votes. They had every right to do that. But others, including Cornellians, had every right to abandon them when they did.

I suspect that you are so deep in your liberal bubble that you don’t know any actual Republicans. Where did you get the idea that the majority of Republicans don’t believe in Evolution? You should get out more.

PRINCETON, NJ — The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.

You have to love the liberal mindset that how you look or who you sleep with is a more important factor in diversity than what you think.

The professors interviewed are pathetic bigots, they assume everyone who does not share their politcal beliefs must be stupid. Cruz and Carson are both brilliant men, Carson is, unlike the English professor, an actual scientist.

It always amazes me that people mention global warming like it has just begun to happen since we humans started destroying it lately. I am pretty sure that where Cornell is located waS once covered by glaciers. I would say there has been huge global warming going on for a long long time. Whose fault was it back then? What caused it back then? Car exhausts, A/C, cows flatulence? Coal? Oil companies? I don’t think so. Our arrogance in thinking that anything we do influences changes now but changes before were just normal experience is ridiculous. We should do our best, each of us on this planet, to protect it and appreciate it, but cuentisrs (who, if honest) will admit there is no certainty in much of scientific theory, and certainly not with climate change. It is changing always, even now. Parts of this country are now experiencing record cold, especially the N/S Poles. That is why it has become climate change instead of the historical Gore inspired global warming theory. Now we are hearing that the ozone layer is repairing to the point that it may be causing a slight warming trend? How about the windmill farms needing to be slowed or stoped because they are causing the deserts to warm up to 10 degrees? Killing flora and fauna. How about the millions of birds being killed by these monstrosities? We all need to look and listen and our great leaders and scientists need to be as honest as they can be to us. Instead, this is used as a political issue to put a wedge between us all. To what end? How much are all these warming alarmists doing to solve these problems starting with themselves? Oops. Huge mansions and grounds lit up like the 4th, huge SUVS and private jets, when all of them could fly airlines and ride in electric cars. It is more of the same. Dems telling all us peons we can change, we can sacrifice and spend money we don’t have to conform, but they are on a whole different level. By the way, AL has made millions of dollars from his “worry and concern” for our globe. Nice job if you can get it.

One last point on this: Universities are not expected to reflect the general drift of public opinion, either domestic public opinion or international public opinion, whatever those are, and you’d get a lot of debate about that. If they did reflect the general drift of public opinion, there would be astrology departments at universities in many countries, probably including this one.

The motto of Harvard is Veritas. The motto of Yale is Lux et Veritas. Or, to quote the words from one of the less frequently sung verses of Far Above Cayuga’s Waters, “So through clouds of doubt and darkness gleams her beacon light, fault and error clear revealing, blazing forth the right.”

That’s a pretty good description of what universities do, or at least try to do. They don’t always succeed, but at least the conditions favoring such an effort are far better at universities than at other institutions in society, such as the corporate media, where staff can be fired and frog-marched out the door on a moment’s notice, or the US Congress. The US Senate was once described with unintentional humor as “the greatest deliberative body in the world.” I believe Senator Bilbo was gone by then, but Senator Eastland was still there and very much in control of key committees. And things have not improved since Eastland’s departure.

Interesting that you failed to include Cornell’s motto which is: “any person, any study.” I guess “any person” is just an obvious euphemism for liberals. But, fortunately, all of this is irrelevant as we don’t construct an institution’s hiring and diversity policy around a cliche.

It may be hard to see anything when your head is located that far up your own anus, but for those of us who are not blinded by fecal matter, it’s apparent that Cornell has a significant student presence of conservatives. But, again, all of this is irrelevant as the failure to include a diverse set of views lies with the faculty & administration. When your entire occupation is about organizing and disseminating ideas, it becomes a problem when 96% of those ideas come from one way of thinking. Cornell has zero incentive to rectify this situation, because there will always be a fresh supply of naive students (like I was 3 years ago when I made the decision to come to dearest Ithaca) hoping to be admitted.

I have no idea who you are, Mr. Cook, so I must take this route to tell you how greatly I appreciate your answers to all the blather about the Sun article and to your criticisms of the article itself.
Donald Mintz BA 49, PhD 60 (and therefore a very old guy)

Wow, you can really feel the hatred for Republicans in some (not all) of those faculty quotes. It’s amazing how Cornell’s Administration loves to talk about embracing differences, except in the case of intellectual diversity.

As a former conservative on campus who now works in the political field, I can tell you that none of the criticism I receive on a daily basis compares to what I had to face with some members of the faculty and staff.

“Any person, any study.” With all due respect, Cornell ’16, I think you may have noticed that Cornell is heavily skewed toward training students for business — even more than many peer schools — and with an obvious pro-business bias. The University has even recently added an undergraduate business degree, in fact several of them:

Undergraduate Programs:
Dyson BS Degree in Applied Economics and Management
School of Hotel Administration BS Degree
Dyson Business Minor for Engineers
Dyson Business Minor for Life Sciences Majors
Dyson Business Minor for Agribusiness
Real Estate Minor
University-Wide Business Minor

Students looking for something different, for example in the Industrial and Labor Relations School, will find to their dismay that ILR courses — REQUIRED courses — train students to work in “human resources” management at large corporations, and overtly from management’s viewpoint.

This has only grown worse in recent years. It – and a possible motivation for it – were ridiculed in a recent article on the Cornell ILR School in Harper’s: “Plaque Ops: The corporate conquest of a labor-relations school” by Russell Mokhiber, Harper’s Magazine, July 2013.

But thank you, Cornell ’16, for your point about “any person, any study,” which actually shows how really unbalanced Cornell’s curriculum has become — in favor of big business, even in the ILR School, which was supposed to maintain some balance. The ILR required curriculum also shows how politically loaded this Sun article is.

On your other point, Cornell ’16, about “work in hard science,” I’m not sure whether you are disputing global warming (the issue mentioned by the professor you ridicule) or the role of fossil fuels in creating it. But it was revealed last month that Exxon itself knew about that role back in 1981, and suppressed it, with behavior reminiscent of the tobacco companies decades earlier. See Inside Climate News, “Exxon: The Road Not Taken: Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago; Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions,” Sep. 21, 2015.

The same goes for the complaint from one student quoted in the article that an ILR economics professor cited the 2008 meltdown as evidence that deregulation and free market economics do not work in their minimal obligation to prevent such devastating meltdowns. Frankly, I have not heard anyone dispute that lately. Even Ayn Rand devotee and former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, in his Congressional testimony October 23, 2008, acknowledged that “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity—myself especially—are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

When Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) asked Greenspan, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Greenspan replied, “Absolutely, precisely.”

– “Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation,” New York Times Business Section, Oct. 23, 2008.

““Placing more emphasis on diversity of political beliefs when hiring [would] almost certainly require sacrificing on general quality or other dimensions of diversity,” he said.”

Does Prof. Andrew Little realize he harbors racist stereotypes? Why can’t a conservative also be a minority? Why does he think hiring a conservative would mean sacrificing other dimensions of diversity?

Take a look at elected Republicans around the country, they are far more ethnically diverse than their Democrat counterparts, this is especially true of the current Presidential candidates.

And as to the question of general quality, I recommend spending some time in the staff bathroom to learn you smell just like everyone else.

“Though Cornell’s administration declined to comment for this article, John Carberry, senior director of media relations, said only that political tendency is ‘not a condition [the University] weighs when hiring or working with faculty.'”

That hardly seems possible. You’d have to try pretty hard, even in academia, maybe even in Ithaca, to get a population of almost unanimous Liberals.

It appears that Cornell and most other academic institutions today, aRE afraid of students hearing the other side and good old common sense ideas. Or maybe it is a little more sinister than that? Maybe they started decades ago to take over academia because they knew that was the best and fastest way to “mold” the thoughts and beliefs of students to fundamentally change our country. When these people state that they have no agenda and believe that different opinions and ideas would somehow lower their high standards, they are lying. They so know what their mission has been and continues to be. Scary and sad.

It’s important that their be diversity. So just as “we play both kinds of music, country and western” so should Cornell have black leftists, white leftists, gay leftists, straight leftists, so on and so forth, so that every last person can have an identical worldview and we can all be good and diverse leftists. I can’t understand why anyone would disagree with that – because I was educated at Cornell.

“I think many mainstream Republicans have views that are anti-intellectual and anti-science,”

Here’s a guy you want to keep away from Albany the next time Cornell’s statutory colleges appropriation comes up!

All the professors I had at Cornell kept their personal politics out of the classroom because they were scholars first and political(if at all)in their spare time. What Cornell needs to avoid are people who believe “everything is political” and are prone to make blanket, campaign-style statements like “many mainstream Republicans” are anti-science. Which is not only untrue (opposing a $5 a gallon “carbon tax” on gas doesn’t mean you’re “anti-science”)but unnecessarily alienates people who we want and need to support Cornell.

Should probably just call it what it is. Your faculty (and administrators, lets not kid ourselves) are liars. Living in a pampered tax payer supported world. Trafficking in hackneyed strawmen held by fellow travellers.
We can ask students of their experiences, but shouldn’t expect them to realize “balance” when all they’ve been exposed to is one side, and have yet to develop the life experience that demonstrates the pampered professors do not in fact present a balanced picture.
Blazing hypocracy. And doing real damage, to the students and society at large.
Lets be honest, don’t blacks hold “false” views? Majority of African Americans do not support gay marriage. Obviously Cornell is not the place for blacks to teach. And hiring blacks on faculty would obviously mean lowering of standards and quality of education.

Gotta love liberals commandeering other people’s money and making a general mess of things. Disgraceful.

What’s anti-intellectual, Doesky2, is deciding based on this Sun article that 97% of the Cornell faculty have the same political viewpoint.

I realize that’s exactly what the Sun wanted you to think. But how did they pull it off?

First, they listed CAMPAIGN DONATIONS — from fewer than a fifth of the faculty — in elections in which Republicans were certain to lose, badly. Few people see any point in giving campaign contributions to hopeless candidates, so the lack of Republican donations was hardly surprising.

And look at the elections the Sun chose. They started with 2011. Why? No national or statewide or congressional elections that year. Oh, but there was the Ithaca mayoral election. In that election, the Republican came in fourth, with 7% of the vote.

OK, it’s not a secret that the GOP is a minor party in Ithaca. But on top of that, the winning candidate, Svante Myrick, was a recent Cornell graduate, Collegetown resident and the Collegetown representative on the Ithaca Common Council. Not surprisingly, he had a lot of support from Cornellians.

The following year, Svante’s Collegetown housemate and fellow recent Cornell grad Nate Shinagawa ran for Congress and also won very strong support from Cornellians. (Details further up in this string of comments.) Both Svante and Nate were featured in a sympathetic NBC TV special after Svante’s election, which undoubtedly helped draw attention and local support.

In all of the elections to statewide posts sampled, in 2012 and 2014, Democrats won in landslides, the same in New York State’s vote for Obama. The GOP couldn’t even find a elected officeholder to run against U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Gillibrand won in a super-landslide. I doubt even you would have thrown money at her opponent.

The Sun quotes from one student who thought it would be more 60-40 in favor of Democrats, and a Government professor who was surprised at the 97% figure, too.

“Nationally, economists, chemists, business school professors and engineers are significantly more conservative than professors in social sciences and humanities,” said Prof. Mildred Elizabeth Sanders, government. “Finding 97 percent of Cornell professors giving to Democrats, that’s surprising.”

Well, 97% of less than a fifth of the faculty, who saw no point in donating to hopeless Republican candidates.

Not 97% of the faculty are Democrats, no.

This article is similar to the kind of work that gave the Cornell Review and Dartmouth Review their notoriety back in the 1980s. It’s frightening that the Sun would have resorted to these tactics, or felt the need to.

I should add that I have accepted the Sun’s claims as accurate, which appears to have been a mistake. Of the six largest Cornell faculty contributors highlighted by the Sun, one doesn’t exist (perhaps the Sun has the name seriously wrong), and another retired in 1993 and lives in New York City.

The Sun also claims that it “confirmed the current appointment of each donor as a Cornell faculty member, instructor or researcher.” That would be far more than the figure I used (1,628) in calculating that the Sun was basing this article on the campaign contributions of fewer than a fifth of the faculty (323 divided by 1628).

If instructors and researchers are included, then the Sun is ignoring the views of much more than 80%.

I cited the Svante Myrick campaign for the same reason I cited the New York State office campaigns in 2014 (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and comptroller), all of which Democrats won in landslides, to show the hopelessness, both for Ithaca offices and for New York statewide offices, of Republican candidates. Needless to say, the unfortunate GOP candidates for those posts did not inspire much in the way of campaign contributions – not just from Cornellians, but from anybody.

An especially revealing example is the 2014 election for New York State Attorney General. Although there was no incumbent running, and although the Democratic candidate was a New York State senator from Manhattan largely unknown outside New York City, he nonetheless won in a landslide, and received over 3.5 times as much money in total statewide campaign contributions as his Republican opponent. Obviously, would-be donors – statewide, not just Cornellians – didn’t think the GOP candidate had a prayer.

The Sun article claims that “Almost one-third of donations made over the past four years went to 2012 presidential campaigns.” That’s one way to put it. Another way is that over two-thirds of the donations were NOT for the 2012 presidential campaigns.

So what else was there?

There were only four federal campaigns in the 2011-2014 period that roused much interest among Cornellians: the 2012 presidential campaign (won by Obama in New York State with over 63 percent of the vote), the 2012 U.S. Senate campaign (won by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand with over 72 percent of the vote), and the 2012 and 2014 congressional campaigns for Ithaca’s congressional district.

Both Democratic congressional candidates were Cornell graduates and Tompkins County residents. (Like 2012 candidate Nate Shinagawa, 2014 candidate Martha Robertson is also a Tompkins County Legislator, from Dryden.) As noted above, Nate Shinagawa came within a whisker of winning against the incumbent Republican, and his story was an inspiring one that motivated campaign participation and contributions.

I cited the Svante Myrick campaign for the same reason I cited the New York State office campaigns in 2014 (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and comptroller), all of which Democrats won in landslides, to show the hopelessness, both for Ithaca offices and for New York statewide offices, of Republican candidates. Needless to say, the unfortunate GOP candidates for those posts did not inspire much in the way of campaign contributions – not just from Cornellians, but from anybody.

An especially revealing example is the 2014 election for New York State Attorney General. Although there was no incumbent running, and although the Democratic candidate was a New York State senator from Manhattan largely unknown outside New York City, he nonetheless won in a landslide, and received over 3.5 times as much money in total statewide campaign contributions as his Republican opponent. Obviously, would-be donors – statewide, not just Cornellians – didn’t think the GOP candidate had a prayer.

The Sun article claims that “Almost one-third of donations made over the past four years went to 2012 presidential campaigns.” That’s one way to put it. Another way is that over two-thirds of the donations were NOT for the 2012 presidential campaigns.

So what else was there?

There were only four federal campaigns in the 2011-2014 period that roused much interest among Cornellians: the 2012 presidential campaign (won by Obama in New York State with over 63 percent of the vote), the 2012 U.S. Senate campaign (won by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand with over 72 percent of the vote), and the 2012 and 2014 congressional campaigns for Ithaca’s congressional district.

Both Democratic congressional candidates were Cornell graduates and Tompkins County residents. (Like 2012 candidate Nate Shinagawa, 2014 candidate Martha Robertson is also a Tompkins County Legislator, from Dryden.) As noted above, Nate Shinagawa came within a whisker of winning against the incumbent Republican, and his story was an inspiring one that motivated campaign participation and contributions.

Conservatives wonder why there aren’t more conservatives professors. Could be that conservatives say college isn’t part of the “real world”, or maybe that conservatives believe in faith over science, or that many conservatives think the earth is 5000 years old and that an 800-year old man named Noah loaded 7 members of every land-based species onto a boat he built, and all that “book-learnin” you can be exposed to on campus might upset that world view.

Could be that college study shows the world is more complex and subtle than conservative slogans.

Could be that it’s pretty hard to become a PhD and not let your mind ever point the critical thinking that you gained from the PhD, at the simplistic “common-sense” worldview taught on right-wing talk-radio and Fox News.

Could be that colleges are full of people from economically-successful socialist countries, like UK, Japan, S Korea, Australia, Germany, etc, who can tell you first-hand that socialism works well in those countries, doesn’t lead to Nazism, doesn’t lead to communism, and doesn’t make people lazy.

Leo, few if any conservatives think any of the things you think they think. That you think these beliefs define all conservatives is prima facie evidence that you reside in a bubble, and need to engage with people who might disagree with you. Nothing makes the argument for diversity of viewpoint better than your comment.

For every conservative generalization you made, there is a match on the liberal side. I know a hippie-chick who thinks that plants have feelings. I know A LOT of liberals who believe in biocentrism, even though the idea holds absolutely no water. It’s also interesting that all of the “people from economically-successful countries” want to come to the US for their education. Why not stay in their “successful countries”? Leo, you watch too much MSNBC, and have been fed the lie that all repubs/cons don’t believe in evolution, can’t think critically, and listen to Rush. They’ve programmed you Leo. Do yourself a favor and stop paying attention to the major media outlets and do your own research, and maybe even *gasp* get to know a conservative.

As a current student at Cornell, who recently returned to school after working in the IT industry for 20 years, I can say without a doubt that Cornell is no different from any other typical college/university in the country today: Liberal factories. I’m so glad that I had a chance to experience the world for myself and form my own opinions before undergoing the indoctrination that all students are subjected to. I do agree with someone’s post that the stats may be slightly skewed based on a few factors, so I’m not sure I agree that 97% of Cornell faculty are dems, but I would bet my life on it that the real number is at least 85%, and most likely around 90%. Being a conservative on a college campus these days is a hostile environment, which is ironic, because the same folks who espouse “openness” and “tolerance”, are the first ones to try to silence someone who they claim holds a “bigoted/racist/classist etc…” viewpoint. It’s all about the silencing. Make them feel as if their opinion is so vile and disgusting, that they withhold it; mission accomplished. Last year was my first year back to school in a looong time, and I was flabbergasted. It’s truly sad, and ironic, that in the university arena, where truth is supposedly held so high, moral and cultural relativism have become the standard. Allan Bloom hit the nail on the head with “The Closing of the American Mind”. How prophetic.

The source of this article is questionable. The following excerpt from the May 1. 2015 Harvard Crimson article “Harvard Faculty donate to Democrats by Wide Margins” uses remarkably similar language:

“The Crimson analyzed the federal donations of contributors who reported Harvard University as their employer and were listed in Harvard directories and websites as professors, lecturers, fellows, associates, researchers, and scientists, as well as visiting fellows and professors. The data set does not include people who only work as administrators.”

There have been a plethora of similar articles in other college papers over the last few years. These articles may have originated at one school, and spread with social media; but it is more likely that they were planted by conservative think tanks. Regardless, Cornell deserves independent journalism. It is difficult to trust the Sun when sources are not appropriately sited and articles are not original. Perhaps an article investigating and addressing the source of these highly political articles would be appropriate?

Wow, Ms. Silverstein. A vast right wing conspiracy whereby the Koch brothers have managed to infiltrate both the Cornell Sun AND the Harvard Crimson, among others. And their reach goes beyond the academy to the think tanks and the establishment liberal press. Witness Arthur Brooks writing on the SAME THEME in Friday’s NY Times.

Yes, the conspiracy has even reached the Grey Lady. And you, Ms. Silverstein, were the one to discover it.

Of course there might be a simpler explanation, namely that elite faculty are overwhelmingly liberal. I’m afraid, Ms. Silverstein, that you have been caught breaking the law of parsimony. Fortunately the penalty is a course in any of the social or physical sciences; even one taught by a lefty at Cornell should do the trick.

I’m simply pointing out that it is an unusual coincidence that more than a few of the lines in the Cornell Sun article are identical to lines in the Harvard Crimson, and various other college papers. The issues of academic integrity are obvious. But there is also a possibility of other inappropriate behavior, and this should be investigated. I do believe that this type of thing happens on all sides of the aisle.

I do not question the integrity of the NYT article. It seems to reflect independent thought, and appropriate journalism, etc. It expresses views that are valuable. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Cornell Sun article.

Wow, I just love this! This is what is wrong with this country. I am not a republican or a democrat. I am a citizen of the United States. Liberal? Conservative? Who gives a rats a__. Instead of donating your money to a political party who only uses it for self preservation, why not use those millions of dollars and give some underprivileged kids an education.

So hiring PhDs from prestigious universities who are conservatives would depress the quality of the Cornell faculty while admitting students with low GPAs and bad test scores from weak high schools improves the quality of the student body. Right! got it.

Sigh… pardon me for meing slow… I’m a Conservative afterall… but NOW I understand the need behind fellow alum David Einhorn’s $50 mil “Engage Cornell” gift last year. Our University has much work to do to “transform” to a place where its folks “embrace differences and diversity in all aspects of their personal, professional and civil lives”.

The students, faculty et al are brainwashed – and of course the comments by the professors and students showcases the so-called “diversity and tolerance” of the left. Since when is calling for ACCURATE records to be used when studying the temperature of the earth “anti-science”? The research done has been EXPOSED as being tampered with, talk about relying on clown-science- where have these professors been???? that hoax was EXPOSED in 2009… I am a public school educated JD, and thank my dear Lord that despite my liberal law school, and my voting for democrats until I KNEW better – I woke up. You all are cocooned, utterly ridiculous in your hypocrisy. That will be a frosty day in Miami before I send my boy to Cornell or any other Unbalanced, intolerant school such as yours. Keep on digging and telling people theyre stupid for being a Republican, wow….I cant believe they dont even try to hide it.

As a grauate of Cornell. I am embarassed by the bizarre statistical conclusion of ths report and the replies. To presume that the contributions of the 20% of the total population who actually donated to polital campaigns is representative of the total population is absurd. The real conclusion is that 80% of professors have not contributed to either party. When I studied statistics at Cornell, the need for independent sampling was one of the bases for statistical analysis. This sample was not unbiased and the inferences demonstrate a lack of critical thought by the authors.

Mr. Sundermeyer, if you did indeed study statistics at Cornell it seems you skipped the first day when the professor explained the difference between a population and a sample. A population includes all of the elements from a set of data. A sample consists of one or more observations from the population. There was no sampling in the Sun report. They looked at the entire population of faculty donors.